CEE Student Raul Vera Wins Undergraduate Sustainability Research Award
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The UMass Amherst Libraries have announced that Raul Vera, an undergraduate in the Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) Department, is one of the five campus recipients of the 2024 Undergraduate Sustainability Research Award. Vera’s award-winning paper studies the continuing water crisis in the Nile River’s watershed through the lens of an urgent political and economic conflict between Egypt and Ethiopia, centered around the construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) and subsequent disputes over natural-resource rights.
According to the UMass Amherst Libraries, the Undergraduate Sustainability Research Award promotes in-depth understanding of sustainability topics, research strategies, and the use of library resources, providing participating students with vital skills they will carry into future academic and vocational endeavors.
The competition was open to all currently enrolled UMass Amherst undergraduates. Five winners were chosen for their outstanding research papers, and each received a $1000 scholarship, thanks to donors to the UMass Amherst Libraries’ Sustainability Fund. The winning papers will be uploaded to ScholarWorks, the university’s digital repository.
As Vera says about the backstory to his paper, “Riparian countries in the Nile Basin are currently experiencing a water deficit, and the newly constructed [GERD]…is exacerbating this issue by blocking the natural flow of the Blue Nile River.”
Just how big is the immense dam in dispute? “Just to put the sheer scale of the project into perspective,” explains Vera, “the GERD is 500-feet tall, while the UMass Dubois Library is about 300 feet. The GERD is taller than many N.Y.C. skyscrapers and is now the largest dam in Africa. Once filled, the dam's reservoir would have a surface area half the size of Rhode Island and about 50 times the volume of the Quabbin Reservoir.
According to Vera, the Blue Nile accounts for 80-to-90 percent of the mainstem Nile's flow during summer months. Some 94 percent of Egypt’s population of more than 100-million people lives along the Nile, and disrupting the flow of the river could have a devastating effect on their livelihoods.
Due to the GERD's construction, says Vera, Egypt could see an 18-percent loss (about two-million acres) of agricultural land in the Nile Delta, unemployment rates rising from a predicted 11 percent to 25 percent, and a loss of $218 million in real gross domestic product. Pitted against that backdrop, Ethiopia is currently experiencing an enormous need for a consistent water and energy supply.
“The International Rescue Committee is a humanitarian organization that ranked Ethiopia as second on its humanitarian crisis watchlist due to it heading toward a sixth-consecutive failed rainy season that affects over 24-million people,” writes Vera. “The GERD would double Ethiopia's electricity production, provide electricity to 60 percent of Ethiopia (currently, only 22 percent of the country has access to electricity), and accelerate industrialization in the region.”
Vera adds that Ethiopian gains are put at $660 million, and benefits would extend to a basin-wide $2 billion in real gross domestic product. The GERD would provide a source of electricity and boost not only Ethiopia's economy, but that of all Nile Basin nations, including Egypt.
“From my newfound understanding of the geopolitical climate in the Nile Basin,” says Vera about his paper, “I created a list of seven actions, such as implementing specific agricultural methods that increase productivity, which would therefore decrease water loss and water demand. I believe my paper gives in-depth context to the region's environmental, social, political, and economic situation, as well as provides sustainable actions that could mitigate the water crisis and benefit all countries in the Nile Basin.”
According to Nandita Mani, dean of University Libraries, “These [Undergraduate Sustainability Research] Awards truly showcase the range of research being done by our undergraduates. The UMass Amherst Libraries are delighted to support our students through the Undergraduate Sustainability Research Awards and to recognize these future leaders, all of whom are working towards a more sustainable future for the benefit of all.” (May 2024)